


Higher Love

by PartyLines



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Azkaban, Confusing, Explicit Language, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Love, Magic Modification, Memory Modification, Muggle Draco, Psychological Trauma, depending on how you look at it, not HEA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 12:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21253106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PartyLines/pseuds/PartyLines
Summary: Hermione Granger learns about love in the conviction of Draco Malfoy.





	Higher Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bourbonrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bourbonrain/gifts).

> Story written for DFW's Halloween Tropes fest. Big thanks to the whole team for hosting! My trope is Muggle Draco.
> 
> This is unbeta'd, and unalpha'd guys-all problems are mine. There was an additional layer to this, but life has had me change my mind. If you squint hard enough, it still makes sense. 
> 
> For you. I love you. 
> 
> Also for my incredible friend, bourbonrain, without whom I don't know how I'd have managed what life's thrown. Thank you my friend.

From amidst the tree line on the outer edges of the park, she watches his wandering with a hand clutched by her collar and a bubble swelling in her throat. Her hold on a rusty lamp post just barely stops her from barrelling after him and explaining everything—just one more time.

Her feet nearly betray her when they bounce forward as he stumbles through screeching horns and irate voices to get across the road, but when he finally notices the cars and his eyes widen and the pink flush creeps over the back of his neck, she knows she can’t confront him. Instead, she jams her eyes shut and counts to ten, giving him time to find the relative safety of the concrete footpath on the other side of the road, before she opens them again as she follows twenty paces behind.

Something about the hunch of his shoulders and the hang of his head remind her of another time on another concrete floor (_Granger, fuck. Get out of here you nosey cunt!)_, and despite ministry orders, Hermione can’t let him out of her sight. She’d taken personal leave and told the papers she was heading off on a well-deserved holiday out of the country, but her story had only earned her raised eyebrows and poorly concealed snorts. She knows her colleagues spend their evenings chattering over _Prophet_ articles with their neighbours, and she can’t begrudge their interest given the silent press and grim shadows that’d dogged the past three years. With a sharp swipe at her eyes, Hermione sighs and picks up her pace.

She just wishes they’d try to _hide_ it better.

Ahead of her, Malfoy pauses his aimless shuffle to see himself in the frosted glass of shop-front windows, only to tilt his head and purse his lips at the blurry reflection (_Are you _crying_ Malfoy? Not quite as tough with Daddy stuck in prison, are you? Shit, sorry. Wait, are you—?)_. Tremulous hands reach out towards his mirror-self—ignorant to the looks of passers-by—and Hermione shudders as his fingers close loosely around air, grasping at a solidarity that doesn’t exist.

When she gets close enough, she can see deep blue hollows swallowing up the empty grey of his eyes and she calls his name unbidden, but he only stares down at his hand as he begins to roam again, leaving her to gasp back choking sounds and grab at a nearby bench to stop the swirling, flashing smoke engulfing her thoughts. She shudders and whistles a breathy whimper, leaning forward into him. His hands are scalding on her skin and his shame is icy as it drips quietly over the sharp lines of his jaw and onto her forehead as she winds tired arms around the thin body that’d tormented her for years.

“Why, Granger?” the body asks, with its closeness, and with the raspy voice floating somewhere above her. “Why are you here?”

She doesn’t know; asks herself the same question every day before she finds him, but she is and she doesn’t want to leave. “Because,” she whispers, fingers finding purchase in the wool of his school robes behind his back. “Because you’re drowning. And I’m floating. And maybe we can find some ground to stand on between us.”

She hears the stutter in his throat just before his mouth finds her flesh, his feet bustling clumsily into hers and his hands reaching for her waist, her neck, her back—drawing hope into his palms and soaking in the promise in her voice. “Maybe,” he murmurs in hot, sticky breaths against her lips. “Maybe I’m already standing.”

Shaking him out of her head, she opens her eyes, feeling her feet find their unsteady footing once again. She scans the street for him, but he’s gone. Alone on a bench in an unfamiliar place, she can tell by the faces of the strangers around her that she’s been crying, and with a hasty sniffle and a few long, deep breaths, steels herself.

“Are you alright, dear?” a woman asks, leaning over her (_too close, suffocating, get away from me)_ and producing a worn handkerchief. “You looked a million miles away.”

Hermione nods, but takes the hanky with a sniff and a stiff smile. “I’m—I’m okay. Thank you,” she manages, before she stands and her wobbly legs begin to carry her away down the street. The woman is taken aback at her abrupt departure, reaching for her arm to steady her as she moves, but Hermione’s spinning—colours warping together, distorting her vision, and she gasps as the air claws her downward toward black. “I’m sorry,” she calls as she turns away. “I have somewhere I need to be.”

She can feel the pity raining on her back but she doesn’t stop.

* * *

It’s three days before she manages to remove the magic repelling charms again, and once more, she’s comforted by the outside of the building. It looks like any discreet, shiny-new facility, and for a moment, she thinks maybe Malfoy’s okay here after all (_I assure you, it’s perfectly safe, Miss Granger)_. Instead of waiting for him to leave, as usual, she makes her way in and all comfort trickles away, replaced by startled horror spreading from her chest in tight, icy vines.

Inside, everything is grey and brown and dead.

It takes her ten minutes to locate him, as the building is divided up by stacked floors and mismatched partitions with no caretaker in sight, and none of the twenty-odd residents can help. They’re all grey and brown and dead too, and stare at her dumbly as though she hadn’t stood against them on the battlefield, wands and words renting the peace, and hadn’t testified against them in the bowels of the ministry. She feels her cheeks heat and shakes off the feeling of responsibility (_guilty, guilty, guilty_).

She supposes in their new world she’s a stranger and magic is a plot device for fairy tales.

“Draco Malfoy,” she says again to Rabastan Lestrange, who’s dark eyes are round and accented only by his slow and careful blinking.

He gapes at her for a few seconds, before returning to the jigsaw on the folding-table beside him and shrugging. “No,” he says.

Swallowing a rough growl and trying to ignore the way that the twisting of her stomach is no longer from fear, she tries again. “Tall and skinny. Pale, like a ghost. Mean sometimes.” She speaks clearly and covers one of his jigsaw-piece wielding hands with her own, stifling the sharp intake of breath that comes as he softens and leans into her. “Your nephew,” she tries again, gently withdrawing her hand and clasping it behind her back with the other. Rabastan only shakes his head, and she sighs as she walks away.

Working methodically, she makes her way through the entirety of the building—past a small, empty infirmary and a room filled with televisions and people entranced by endless commercials—and finally she sees his distinctive shock of blonde in the corner of a room filled with last century’s treadmills. He doesn’t look up when she walks in, intent upon fiddling with the knobs of his machine and watching the belt travel around and around and around. He always likes to keep his hands busy, even when his mind is racing, as though he can keep his tumultuous life in check if only his hands obey (_It’s going to be okay, Granger. It’ll all be over soon and you’ll be fine)_.

Even when they’re tracing lines on her sweaty, sex-soaked skin, they’re busy. His fingertips are too course for his station, and she wonders what exactly he’s doing that requires manual labour as he draws pictures and apologies with the remnants of her cum against her thigh, his quick tongue silenced and usually taught body boneless and soft. “Does it still make you sick?” she mumbles, shying away from his hands and dragging herself up. “What we do?”

Leaning back, he considers her for a moment, raking judgement down her body before boring into her with a steely gaze. “Not what we do, no,” he says firmly, trying to tug her back towards him even as she edges towards her waiting robes where they’re strewn across the floor of an open cubicle.

“But me,” she says with a grimace. “The sex is okay, but I’m sickening.”

He swallows and shakes his head unconvincingly. “God Granger, no. It’s not you. You’re—,” he falters, hands ruffling the skin on his face and his chest expanding with exasperation. “You’re the only thing that’s not.”

She scowls, fumbling with her knickers as she yanks them up over her feet and eyes him curiously. “Right. Well, if you’d just talk to me?” _(Tell me what’s going on, Draco. I lo—I deserve to know)._

She’s asked a thousand times, and knows she’ll ask a thousand more, but he stays quiet, so she pulls her robes over her head, straightens her hair, and leaves.

She watches him fiddling for a few moments more, and then she leaves the treadmill room, too.

* * *

“You’ve got to stop this you know.” Harry finds her in the evening, cross-legged in the serene gardens of the institute. “You need to come home to us.”

Hermione scowls, blinking back the tears that fill her eyes when he rubs her back in his awkward attempt to make her feel better. “Kingsley didn’t say they were taking everything,” she murmured. “Just the magic. It was just supposed to be the magic.” Folding her feet beneath her, she takes a chunk of perfect lawn and crushes it between her fingers.

“Mistake, Hermione. It was a mistake. You know what these charms are like. They can—.”

“No. Shut up, Harry. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to _defend _them. They—they took _everything_! You haven’t seen him. You don’t know. He doesn’t know how to _be _anymore.”

Harry rubs the bridge of his nose, looking every inch the soldier he’s become, before dragging her into a stilted, desperate hug. “But it _was_—,” he starts, but pauses for a moment to drop a kiss into her unwashed hair. “I’m sorry,” he says instead. “I’m sorry he’s gone, Hermione, but at least he’s alive.”

Laughter bubbles up in her chest until it bursts out, driven by all the tension of the weeks past. She lets go of Harry to clutch at her sides, tears streaming down her face and dark cackles roaring from somewhere closed off inside her. “Yes Harry,” she nods, brushing unruly hair from his eyes. “That was supposed to be the point, really, wasn’t it?”

She doesn’t say goodbye before she stands and ducks back through the wards, revelling for just a moment in the crackling of her magic as it’s returned.

Somehow, she thinks, Harry’s missed the point.

* * *

“Draco!” she calls, heart racing as he meanders past her the next morning. “Draco Malfoy!” She’s gasping when she catches up to him, and grabs at his arm, her fingers digging through the wasted muscle and almost finding bone. “Stop for a second!”

Finally, he whirls around to face her and she’s like a deer in the headlights staring at him, the million words she wants to say dying in her burning throat. He watches her back, confusion stark on his once proud face, and it’s all she can do not to turn and run.

“Draco?” Absentmindedly, she runs her fingers down his arm, searching for the hand that fits hers so well.

His confusion fades (_You’re impossible to escape, Granger. You’ll be on my mind wherever I end up—keeping me sane, I’m sure_), and briefly, Hermione braces herself, brimming with excitement and digging her nails into his wrist. He cocks his head and stares back at her for a moment, but his vacant expression is too much and she yanks her hand away, reeling backwards to lean against the bus stop shelter.

Wide eyed and blank faced, he looks her over once more before turning away, shaking his head. Buckling knees struggle to keep her upright, but she reaches after him—wanting, needing, _pleading_—and she sees him pause. He knows it’s her—she can see it in the tense lines of his shoulders, but he doesn’t bother to turn.

The damp walls ooze cold and her footsteps echo high up toward the ceilings, mimicking the chasm that’s opening between them on the tiles. “Why’re you here, Granger?” he asks the basin in front him, hands decorated in veiny lace and pulse racing at his throat.

Sighing, she lays a palm against his cheek before he shrugs her off. “You know why, Draco. Nothing’s changed.”

“We can’t. I won’t. You don’t need this.” He’s striding out of the room and she wants to follow but knows it’s pointless.

Nothing’s changed.

_Everything’s _changed, and she just couldn’t listen for once in her life, and she’s left feeling lost and bereft when the ground stops shaking and her breathing evens. She finds herself curled in a ball in the corner of the bus stop, alone.

* * *

“But you have to!” she shouts at Kingsley, hands on her hips in the doorway of his office. “You have to change the charm—you have to reverse this!” It’s been a week since her last encounter with Draco, and her high temper is compounded by a deep ache roiling in her bones.

Kingsley bows his head and pulls a dusty bottle of firewhiskey from his bottom draw, summoning two glasses from the bureau in the hall. “Come sit, Miss Granger,” he says, motioning for her to duck as the glasses soar above her head. “I don’t think I understand your complaint.”

Infuriated, Hermione stomps toward the desk, muttering obscenities under her breath and fighting against the sneer building on her face. She leans against the chair but doesn’t sit. Rolling her knuckles against the timber, she exhales and watches the Minister, brows raised and foot tapping expectantly.

“What’s the problem, exactly?” he asks, pushing a whiskey toward her and holding her gaze, the stern curiosity in his eyes unable to extinguish the warmth of kindness that make him perfect for his position in a post-war community. “You say there’s something terribly wrong with the charm?”

“It doesn’t work.” Hermione answers, her curt voice wavering just a little. “It takes everything. They don’t know _anything_, Kingsley.”

“Miss Granger, I’m struggling to see the failure here. The idea was to remove all traces of magic—”

“It’s not just the magic!” she interrupts, the glass of firewhiskey upended as she rises to her full height. “They don’t know who they are! They don’t know what to do with themselves, how to get by! They can hardly communicate—Kingsley, there’s nothing left. They’re… They’re empty.”

(_Did you hear, Hermione? Kingsley’s not going to have dementors at Azkaban. He says damaging souls is inhumane—for totalitarian regimes who don’t care about their people. Removing them altogether is… Well, he says it’s not okay, anyway)._

“Miss Granger, the charm is new and—”

“And it doesn’t work! Not like it’s supposed to. You need to see them. Then you’ll understand.”

Kingsley takes a deep breath and clears his throat, raising a hand to quiet her. “The charms are _new_, and it will take time for us to work out all the bugs… It’ll take time for the convicted to _adjust._”

Hermione knows he’s doing his best—knows he’d never have allowed it if he’d known—but there’s a coiled, desperate ruin bursting out of her and she can’t stop herself. “You know what, _Minister?_” she barks. “You’re no better than the rest of them. There must be something. You have to _do_ something. He’s been doing this for too long already. He can’t do this anymore. _I _can’t do this anymore!”

She gasps and throws her hand up to cover her mouth, wide eyes blinking in realisation at what she’s just said. With her eyes closed and her chin dipped toward her collar bone, she backs out of the office without another word.

* * *

She finds him throwing pebbles into the duck pond by the institute and drops onto the grass just out of his eyeline, clutching her bag tightly to her chest and trying not to succumb to the rattling emotion threatening to swallow her. Content for a time, she watches as he mumbles in gibberish to the birds, lost in the familiar tone of his voice. (_No, I won’t let you. I don’t ever want to forget. If I forget about you being here—being with me, how will I know who I am_)?

The low monotone of his words sooth the tearing, chomping _beast_ that’s resting on her heart, and she lays back against the ground, releasing a long sigh when she feels his touch against her face—straightening the sparking worry from her wild curls. “Okay,” he says, the whine in his voice making it clear this is a touchy topic.

Her lips quirk in a faint smile and she nestles in closer to his bent knees, drinking him in—the starch of his trousers and the faint smell of broom polish and stark, bright anxiety. “Okay, what?” she asks, bumping his calf encouragingly.

“Stay. Please stay. You—you were right… I guess. Even if it pulls us apart. We have now.”

With her smile blooming and something like joy fluttering in her chest, she giggles and pulls him down to her. When his skin’s touching hers, she can feel his gaze linger on her face and opens her eyes to meet his. Translucent grey melts into steel and effervescent blues—so alive and radiant and _contagious_ that her breath catches and she can’t help but feel as though, just maybe, everything might right itself.

For a moment, she’s lost in him, and then she’s flailing underneath him because there’s no blue, or steel, or life, or happiness—there’s _nothing_ but flat, dead, grey, and a scream tears from her lungs in cracked, broken shards, and out, into the world, where she can’t take it back.

He’s standing over her, his face contorted with confusion and scrunched in worry. “Sorry,” he says, stumbling back. “Sorry I uh. I thought maybe I knew you.” (_Okay, Draco. I promise. I won’t let you forget. Never. I’d never ask you to lose who you are. Not for me). _Stuffing his hands in his pockets he shakes his head and her heart breaks. “I was wrong, I guess.”

* * *

It’s dark in the gallery, but the small arena is lit with stark white non-magical light. She wonders if it’s designed to make them uncomfortable.

She certainly is.

Wedged into a chair between Harry and Ron, Hermione tugs at her hair and fusses with the hem of her dress, not quite able to watch as the group of young men is brought in—lined up in a neat, mocking row. Forcing herself to lift her eyes, she watches as Draco shuffles in his place beside the three others who’d chosen the curse (_but it was _their _choice, Hermione_). His vague, unknowing expression bites holes in her insides when he latches onto her as though she’s the only safe place in the world, and she tightens her grip on her hands. (_I won’t let it happen, Draco. No one in their right mind could convict you)!_

There’s an energy buzzing thickly around her—excitement, anticipation, _retribution_—as the executioners shuffle and mutter their way to the stand. They waste no time in turning their wands on the first in the row—Pansy Parkinson’s elder brother—before waiting to be counted in. Four green flashes mingle together and he’s gone, without fanfare, and no one to send him off. 

Draco is next (_I’ve changed my mind, Minister. He chose this for me. He—he wanted the curse. He didn’t want this. I was wrong. This—this isn’t any better)_.

Hermione wants to turn away, but four years ago, up against a wet stone wall in a flooded bathroom, she’d promised him she’d stay. She catches his eye and with a discreet wave of her wand, she breaks a hundred wizarding laws and releases him from the memory charm that stole him away so entirely; so greedily. She isn’t able to reverse the magic removal. A strangled cry is torn from her as sudden recognition bends his expression; widens his eyes and brings a sparkle to the surface; squares his shoulders and stretches out a hand. The dense fog encircling her mind begins to lift for the first time since he’d been sentenced, and she feels the ground beneath her harden as the colours become bright and clear. As his recognition turns to affection, she darts forward towards him. Her breath comes in short sharp pants and her eyes stream with regret as she reaches for the door, only to be caught short by Harry behind her.

“It’s the right thing, Hermione,” he whispers in her ear, trying to keep himself from being smacked by the violent shaking of her head. “You saw. You know.” (_Now isn’t enough, now will _never _be enough_).

Four wands are trained on Draco’s chest, and he doesn’t move. His eyes find hers in the seconds before the flash, overflowing with gratitude and acceptance, and it takes her breath away and her knees give in as he falls, taking her to the ground with him.

Her screams are silent as Harry pins her close to his chest and Ron pats her back awkwardly and muttering his _I’m so sorry_s, and _you did the right thing_s. She shakes and shudders and bleeds what’s left of her soul into the carpet, fingernails clawing upwards and towards Draco. Only when the last of the men are gone does she feel the blissful ascension into nothingness begin to take her.

“Still standing, Draco,” she whispers into Harry’s chest, and closes her eyes against the grief.


End file.
